


lulled and lingered

by Emamel



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Did I make Roach a kelpie? Maybe, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Mentioned other characters - Freeform, Mentions of Myth & Folklore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24845779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel
Summary: “I don’t suppose you happen to know where we are? Or where my phone is? Or my friends? Or - ha, this is embarrassing, how I actually got here, do you?”The child blinked, and glanced at something behind Julian. He didn’t turn to look.“Roach liked you,” she said, which explained precisely nothing and did, in fact, leave Julian with far more questions than he started the day with.“I - see,” he said, rather than voicing any of them.“Usually she just drowns people,” she continued, apparently oblivious to the way the blood drained from Julian's face.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 27
Kudos: 333
Collections: The Witcher, The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #001





	lulled and lingered

**Author's Note:**

> I love everyone in this server/barthroom, will one of you please tell me why I thought this was a good idea
> 
> Posted for fun and not part of the competition, but it's going in the collection anyway and we all have to suffer it

It took Julian a few long moments when he woke to realise that he was  _ firstly _ underwater, and  _ secondly _ really quite desperate for air. That perhaps should have started the alarm bells ringing, but, well -

He was a little too preoccupied with the reality of panicking to really dig down to the root cause of the panic, thank you  _ very  _ much. There was also the unpleasant shock of waking up exceptionally sober when he really thought he had at least three days more of drunken sobbing on Priscilla’s shoulder to look forward to. That was… less of a concern than the water up his nose and filling his throat, but it did certainly merit coming back to at a later point.

It took a little bit of flailing, some coughing and far more panicking than he would willingly admit to before Julian finally managed to break the surface of the water and catch hold of something solid. He gripped it tight as his thoughts dizzily chased each other, and he tried to convince himself that he was actually only keeping his eyes shut because of the sudden rush of vertigo, and not at all because he was afraid of what he might see when he opened them.

_ Coward _ was such an ugly word, but it was one that Julian had had thrown at him on more than one occasion, and not always without provocation. It was also a word he hated, beyond sense, beyond reason; and it was, he was starting to suspect, at least partly to blame for his current predicament, whatever that may be.

Well. Most of the blame rested squarely on Valdo’s shoulders - he ought to have known that Julian wouldn’t turn down a taunt like that, especially not drunk. Especially not heartbroken. Especially not drunk  _ and  _ heartbroken.

So yes, absolutely that miscreant’s fault, and there certainly wasn’t enough blame left over after all of that to place on Julian, no, definitely not, he -

Still hadn’t opened his eyes, and now had the uncomfortable sensation that he was being scrutinised. This was not an unfamiliar feeling to Julian, who had to endure a certain level of disdainful staring from his entire extended family whenever he rallied himself enough to pay a visit to Lettenhove.

Something about this staring felt different though. Weightier, perhaps. Wiser. 

His hand started to slip on the smooth, cool surface, and in the third burst of panic for the day, his eyes flew open.

Two bright eyes stared back at him, worryingly close - brilliant green, and set in a small, freckled face with an upturned nose and a downturned mouth. Julian froze, still panting and coughing on every fourth breath, though his chest felt surprisingly… clear.

“You’re in my bath,” the child -  _ child! -  _ said. Julian swallowed heavily and allowed himself a few precious seconds to glance around and confirm that yes, he was indeed sat in a bathtub, and yes, that bathtub was half-full of cool water. Which, really,  _ really _ didn’t make any sense whatsoever, as he was quite certain he’d been fully submerged until scant minutes ago and the tub certainly wasn’t as large as all that; but then, none of this had made any sense so far.

They were also outside, but honestly, that was so far down on his list of things to deal with that it hardly ranked at all.

“I, well, yes, that does, ha, appear to be an accurate summation of this, this situation we find ourselves in,” he said, and stood. The tub shook unsteadily, and the water rocked, leaving Julian with the uncomfortable sensation of what he could only imagine was seasickness. The child watched him brace himself against the edge of the tub, still staring at him with unsettlingly bright green eyes. He took a deep breath and forced himself to do what he always did in situations that had rapidly spiralled beyond all control - keep talking.

“I don’t suppose you happen to know where we are? Or where my phone is? Or my friends? Or - ha, this is embarrassing, how I actually got here, do you?”

The child blinked, and glanced at something behind Julian. He didn’t turn to look.

“Roach liked you,” she said, which explained precisely nothing and did, in fact, leave Julian with far more questions than he started the day with.

“I - see,” he said, rather than voicing any of them. The child - it was impossible for Julian to guess at her age, beyond wondering if she ought to be in school right now as he was fairly sure today should be Wednesday - turned back to him, and smiled. Her hair, he noticed for the first time, was soaking wet, dripping down her shoulders and leaving rivulets of water along her muddied skin. There was also what had to be a frankly uncomfortable amount of pond weed clinging to it, which did at least explain why she was so eager to get him out of her bath.

“Usually she just drowns people,” she continued, apparently oblivious to the way the blood drained from Julian's face.

"Oh," he managed through shaking lips, and very carefully didn't turn around to see if this Roach character that was apparently so fond of drowning hapless passers-by was still somewhere in the vicinity.

"Mhm," the child said, and smiled wider, and oh  _ what big teeth you have, grandma. _

Julian dragged his eyes away. It probably wasn't polite to stare, and the last thing he really wanted to do was upset a child that looked like she could quite easily open his throat with her teeth.

"Not me, obviously," she continued, as though Julian's horror wasn't writ large across all of his features and likely the rest of him too.

"Obviously," he agreed, voice a weak parody of itself.

"Or you, for some reason," she said, and tilted her head. "How come Roach likes you so much?"

"You know," Julian said, finally fortifying himself and stepping entirely out of the tub. "I really couldn't tell you." He was missing a shoe, he realised belatedly, and there were holes in his trousers that hadn't been there when he put them on.

This may not have been the weirdest start to a morning he'd ever had, but he would concede it was in the top five. There were still some worrying gaps in his memory, though, and the day was still young. Plenty of time for things to take a turn for the worse.

The girl didn't look very satisfied with his answer, but then, Julian wasn't particularly satisfied with it either. He didn't know who Roach was, he didn't know who this child was, and the last thing he remembered with any sort of clarity was Valdo goading him into trying to catch the horse that had started hanging around their campsite. Not that he had required much goading - Priscilla had worried that the poor thing might be hungry, and Julian had worried that it might wander towards the road. Not that any of them had any idea what to do with the damn thing if he'd managed to get hold of it, but such concerns had been secondary in his hazy mind.

All Julian knew was that Valdo had dared him; and after his dear Violetta had broken his heart for the final time, he had thought, well, perhaps wandering into the darkened woods after a horse that reeked of brackish water was a fitting end for Julian Pankratz. He could die as he had lived - doing something foolhardy and reckless to impress someone that didn't really give a shit  _ what _ he did.

"Do you dance?" The child asked; Julian blinked at the abrupt change in subject.

"Um, well yes, although typically with a great deal more enthusiasm than what would traditionally be called skill," he said warily.

She looked a little disappointed at that.

"Oh, I thought maybe Roach saw you dancing and thought you'd be fun," she said, and puffed out her cheeks in a startlingly childish expression of thought. "Well, do you… sing?"

Julian bristled, and then sternly told himself to calm down. He wasn't well known enough to go around getting upset that wild children in the woods hadn't heard of him. Besides; this Roach had clearly thought he was good enough to be spared a grisly death, and that really should count for something.

"I have been known to," he said, and swept into the deep bow that he opened all of their shows with. It didn't have quite the same  _ oomph  _ to it without stage lights and at least a smear of make-up, but it would do for now. "I am but the humble bard Jaskier; and usually behind me is my roving band of vagabonds, to assist me in telling my tales."

The girl blinked, looking not at all impressed. Which he supposed was fair enough - he did make a bit of a sorry sight.

"Is that what you were doing in our woods?" She asked - and oh, that was definitely skepticism he was hearing, the  _ nerve!  _

“Something like that,” he conceded, because it sounded far better than  _ we were taking a possibly ill-advised camping trip to distract me from my romantic woes and also work on a couple of songs where no-one could hear us.  _ Especially because apparently someone  _ had _ heard them.

She pursed her lips in thought, before apparently reaching some conclusion and bobbing her head at him.

“You may call me Ciri,” she said, and held out an imperious hand. Jaskier - not feeling at all in control of the situation and unsure of what else to do - accepted it, bowing again as though she were a fine queen of old.

“It is an honour and a privilege,” he told her, and definitely didn’t consider just how cold and damp her hand was.

Ciri smiled again, that same wide and toothy grin as before, and used the hand she still clasped to start pulling him towards the treeline, and what might have been a path, and might just have easily been a bolt-hole for small animals. Jaskier finally screwed up his courage, and turned to look at the rest of the small clearing, but there was no-one there besides that  _ fucking horse _ placidly nosing at a patch of forget-me-nots. It was far bigger than he remembered, and looked a great deal more powerful too; less approachable. And there was - though Jaskier didn't claim to be any sort of expert on the subject - something about the line of its face and the shape of its eyes that were… distinctly un-horselike.

It was also dripping wet. Jaskier suppressed a shiver as it lifted its head to watch them go, water streaming from its mouth and nose, something that didn’t seem to worry it in the slightest.

Ciri glanced back to see what had made him hesitate, and snorted.

"Don't worry about Roach, she isn't going to change her mind now," she said, and  _ hold on _ . Roach was - was the  _ horse?  _ The, the absolute nightmare of a steed that he was beginning to suspect he'd spent most of the night chasing was  _ Roach _ ? Roach, who apparently had a habit of drowning people she didn't like and had for some reason taken a shine to him?

For perhaps the first time in his life, Jaskier didn't know what to say.

Ciri was still talking, he realised belatedly, the trilling chatter of an excited child, though Jaskier was now almost certain that she was nothing of the sort. He rubbed his free hand across his mouth and shoved the panic deep down in his chest. There was no time for that, he told himself. Already, he'd been missing all night and most of the day - Priscilla would have thought to call for help by now. All he had to do was bide his time a little while longer, and not upset the strangely charming girl that was now excitedly telling him about her own singing lessons. 

Eventually, when she finally paused for breath - at least, he assumed that was what she was doing, but really who could be sure? - he gently interrupted to ask,

"Where are we going?"

Ciri pointed just ahead - oh, he somehow hadn't noticed the delicate webbing between her fingers before, that was, uh, fun - to a slightly lighter patch of trees.

"You have to meet Geralt," she said, tugging a little more insistently. "Roach likes you, so you have to meet Geralt."

That didn't sound terribly reassuring; but then, nothing about the day so far had been particularly positive, so he was willing to reserve judgement.

They almost burst from the trees into a mottled patch of sunlight that seemed a great deal brighter and warmer than it had been just a few minutes before. Jaskier squinted against it for a moment, before he could blink away the spots across his vision.

There was a small river, flowing fast at the closest bank, but almost eerily still where it twisted into a small pool on the far side - even stood this close, he couldn't hear so much as the faintest rush of water that might indicate its presence. Had he wandered this way alone, he almost certainly would have fallen in. There was also, he noted, no sign of anyone else nearby. Unless this Geralt was a tree, or a boulder, they were utterly alone.

Wait, Geralt  _ wasn’t _ a tree or a boulder, was he? Was that something Ciri had mentioned while he hadn’t been listening? It seemed like the sort of thing that might be difficult to miss, but then, Jaskier had always had a remarkable talent for ignoring things that he didn’t give a fuck about.

Beside him, Ciri bounced excitedly, hopping from one bare foot to the other. There were half-crushed petals and pollen smeared across her skin in colourful flashes that left him dizzy if he looked at them for too long. He only had enough time to shake his head to clear it, and hope that Ciri didn’t think to mention to this  _ Geralt _ that she had found him lounging in her bathtub, before a voice like shifting gravel sounded from somewhere before them.

“I thought I told you to stay with Roach.”

“Well I was going to -”

“I thought I told you no aeschna until you can manage a glamour.”

“Yes, alright, you  _ did _ say that, but -”

“I thought I told you it’s too dangerous for little sprites to get so close to a hunt.”

“I’m not a  _ little sprite _ -”

“I thought I told you that if you get too close, you’ll be  _ eaten!” _

The water exploded. Jaskier didn’t know how else to describe it - the pool was almost perfectly still, only the faintest currents and eddies hinted at on the surface, and then it was  _ alive _ . He screamed, tried to scramble back, and felt more than a little vindicated when Ciri screamed too. After all, she was apparently in a much better position than him to know what sort of things should make someone afraid in these woods. 

It was only half a second later that he realised she wasn’t really screaming at all - she was  _ cackling _ , dangling by one hand and foot as she was hefted effortlessly into the air.

“Beast!” She shrieked, and then twisted, laughing harder as the dark figure lifted her higher. “Brute! Unhand me!”

“Would an aeschna unhand you?”

It was the same voice as before, and its owner didn’t appear to have noticed Jaskier. If he was going to try to make an escape, it would have to be now, before the figure glanced past Ciri and finally noticed him. It - he? Maybe? - curled around Ciri, dipping her low and trailing her hair through the mud at the side of the river, which did at least explain a couple of things. She shrieked again, and there was the clack of teeth, snapping near her neck.

_ Coward _ was such an ugly word, and it was one that Jaskier had had thrown at him on more than one occasion - but even as his heart blocked his throat, even as his hands shook, even as he knew Ciri would do a far better job of defending herself than he ever could, he…

She was a  _ child _ and Jaskier was many things - a cad, a coward, a melodramatic hack with less talent than he believed and more ego than he deserved (thanks,  _ Valdo _ ) but he wasn’t a monster. He couldn’t just - turn tail and run.

He also couldn’t unstick his feet from the ground, and given everything that had already happened today, he couldn’t be sure if that was literal or not. He wasn’t willing to look too closely. But what he could do - what he always did, what he was exceptionally  _ good _ at doing - was draw attention to himself.

“Excuse me!” He called, and regretted it instantly.

The figure couldn’t have been any taller than Jaskier if he was wearing both boots, but there was a crushing presence that had him bending back, sweat suddenly beading down his back. He swallowed hard, and the figure was abruptly so close that he must have been able to hear Jaskier’s throat click. He must have been wearing some sort of deep hood, or even a veil or something - beyond the impression of bone-white skin and the flash of bared teeth, Jaskier couldn’t make out any features.

“Cirilla,” the figure said. Ciri, clinging to his back, tipped forward over his shoulder to look at the space where his face must be.

“Yes, Geralt?” She said, which did at least confirm his vague suspicions.

“Explain.”

“This is Jaskier. He sings,” she said, and Geralt managed to give the impression of a heavy sigh, despite neither moving nor making a sound. Jaskier was suitably impressed.

“Yes, I kn - what is he  _ doing _ here?”

“Roach liked him,” Ciri said cheerfully. That must have meant a great deal more to Geralt than it first had to Jaskier, as he didn’t seem to feel the need to investigate further. The hood… cloak… thing tipped, the hair on the back of Jaskier’s neck rose, and he was struck with the knowledge that he was being watched, right down to his very soul.

“Of course she did, meddlesome thing,” Geralt muttered. He shifted again, and Ciri slipped soundlessly to the soft forest floor. She didn’t seem to have any problems with getting sucked into the mud, Jaskier noted bitterly.

“Take him back to Roach and  _ wait there _ for me,” Geralt said, and the tone of his voice was so very like Jaskier’s own father that a scowl twisted his face automatically. It was strange, that this creature who so far had done nothing but grumble and snap still managed to show more of a parental instinct than the entire extended Pankratz family put together. Even if his idea of a lesson was to threaten Ciri with evisceration.

Jaskier didn’t really know if it would be safer to remain here, with the thing that might try to kill him and Geralt who so far hadn’t shown much inclination either way, or to return to the horse that he knew  _ did _ kill people but had apparently taken a shine to him. Decisions, unpleasant decisions.

In the end, it was Roach that made the decision for him; she stepped out of the trees, looking about as little like a horse as it was possible to look whilst still retaining all of the basic horse-features. Jaskier froze as she drifted past him, close enough to touch if he were daring enough to reach out a hand. The odd shape of her muzzle, though, told him it might be a bad idea unless he fancied losing a few fingers.

Geralt held no such misgivings, and greeted her like a particularly beloved friend.

Ciri scrambled up onto the probably-not-a-horse’s broad back, using Geralt as a climbing frame, and then lay there, batting her wide eyes at Geralt with a toothy grin.

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” he said, but his tone was defeated. 

“The aeschna can wait, can’t they?” She asked, twisting until her head dangled over the creature’s shoulder. 

“Not according to Yen they can’t,” Geralt said, but he was already heading away from the river, Roach trailing placidly at his side. 

Jaskier now found himself with a new dilemma: follow the murderous horse, possibly murderous figure, and probably not murderous child deeper into the woods; or remain hopelessly lost and alone where he was, potentially in the company of a murderous river beastie. 

_ Better the devil you know, _ Jaskier told himself firmly - he squared his shoulders, unstuck his feet, and turned to follow them.

**Author's Note:**

> Does Geralt sometimes glamour himself to sneak in and watch Jaskier perform? Who knows? (me, I know, yes he does, and Roach knows too)


End file.
